narrowcast: September 2021

My Top 50 Albums of 1987

Thursday, September 30, 2021

I started really seriously listening to music in the early '90s and kind of eventually started working my way back into the past and picking up older albums, and 1987 was the first year that I kind of took notice of, like "wow, a lot of great stuff came out that year." Here's my Spotify playlist with a song from each album.

1. Prince - Sign O' The Times
2. Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction
3. Sonic Youth - Sister
4. Dinosaur Jr. - You're Living All Over Me
5. INXS - Kick

6. George Michael - Faith

7. U2 - The Joshua Tree

8. Eric B & Rakim - Paid In Full

9. Pixies - Come On Pilgrim EP
10. The Replacements - Pleased To Meet Me

11. LL Cool J - Bigger And Deffer

12. Def Leppard - Hysteria

13. The Meat Puppets - Huevos

14. The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

15. Pet Shop Boys - Actually

16. Tom Waits - Franks Wild Years

17. Alexander O'Neal - Hearsay

18. Dwight Yoakam - Hillbilly Deluxe

19. Lyle Lovett - Pontiac

20. Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel Of Love

21. John Mellencamp - The Lonesome Jubilee

22. Public Enemy - Yo! Bum Rush The Show

23. Whitney Houston - Whitney

24. Big Black - Songs About Fucking

25. R.E.M. - Document

26. fIREHOSE - If'n

27. Husker Du - Warehouse: Songs And Stories

28. Suzanne Vega - Solitude Standing

29. Ice-T - Rhyme Pays

30. Prince - The Black Album

31. Squeeze - Babylon And On

32. Expose - Exposure

33. The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs

34. Warren Zevon - Sentimental Hygiene

35. Steve Earle & The Dukes - Exit 0

36. Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation

37. Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded

38. Michael Jackson - Bad

39. Depeche Mode - Music For The Masses

40. Kool Moe Dee - How Ya Like Me Now

41. The Meat Puppets - Mirage

42. Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night

43. Lemonheads - Hate Your Friends

44. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)

45. Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Uplift Mofo Party Plan

46. Motley Crue - Girls, Girls, Girls

47. Whodini - Open Sesame

48. REM - Dead Letter Office

49. David Bowie - Never Let Me Down

50. Sting - ...Nothing Like The Sun

1984 is rightfully often held up as the peak year of '80s pop, but I would argue that 1987 is a firm runner-up. Most of the same major players from 1984 except Madonna dropped albums in '87, plus monster albums by Guns N' Roses, George Michael, U2, Def Leppard, INXS, and Whitney Houston. 1987 also feels like a growth spurt year for alternative rock, essentially the year that spurred Billboard to finally start publishing a Modern Rock chart in 1988. R.E.M. and The Cure were stepping into the spotlight, and the SST bands were on fire. Come On Pilgrim ranks much higher here than any of the Pixies' proper full-lengths did on my other year lists, a friend lent me a cassette of it in high school and I've just never quite clicked with other Pixies records in the same way, it's my one big indie snob "their first EP was the best one" opinion.

Previously:

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1988

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1989

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1990

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1991

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1992

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1993

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1994

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1995

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1996

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1997

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1998

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1999

My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2000

My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2001

My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2002

My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2003

My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2004

My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2005

My Top 25 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2006

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2007

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2008

My Top 50 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2009

My Top 50 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2010

My Top 50 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2011

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2012

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2013

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2014

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2015

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2016

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2017

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2018

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2019

My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2020

1:09 PM

Movie Diary

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

a) Malignant

With three of the biggest horror franchises of the past 20 years (Saw, The Conjuring, and Insidious) under his belt, it's kind of surprising that James Wan isn't more well known than he is at this point, I feel like he got more name recognition from doing Aquaman and a Fast & Furious movie. The buzz around Malignant got me really excited to see it, and I have to say, I didn't love it like some people did, it had a weird mix of tones and the wisecracking cop's awful quips felt out of place. But I'm really glad I managed to not read any spoilers and was totally blindsided by the twist, I recommend seeing it before they probably make a sequel where the advertising gives away everything that happened in the first movie.

b) Kate

Action movies starring women have enough of an uphill battle as it is, it seems a shame when one commits the unforced error of a premise that echoes a famous male-led action movie as much as Kate brings to mind Jason Statham's Crank, another movie where a badass professional killer is poisoned and runs around getting violent revenge as they face imminent death. But Mary Elizabeth Winstead really throws herself into the role well and there are some thrillingly choreographed fight scenes, and the charmingly cranky Woody Harrelson-type mentor character is played by Woody Harrelson, which I always like to see.

c) Nightbooks

It's fun to see Krysten Ritter chewing the scenery as a green-haired witch in this Netflix movie, it works surprisingly well considering that almost the whole movie takes place in an apartment with Ritter and two child actors.

d) Tenet

I will give some credence to Christopher Nolan's tantrums about demanding this be seen in theaters and admit that I could tell it would work way better in that environment, at home it was too easy to tune out or let my attention wander at times. But this was good, I was impressed by how the 'backwards' bits were filmed in a way that felt seamless and plausible, and tonally and conceptually it reminded me of Looper, probably my favorite sci-fi movie of the last decade. Having that dogshit Travis Scott song instantly play over the closing credits really breaks the spell of the movie, though.

e) The Loud House Movie

"The Loud House" is one of my kids' favorite shows, it's a cute little animated sitcom about a family with 11 kids. A few months after the show debuted on Cartoon Network, it was announced that there'd be a theatrical movie, but then a few months after that, the creator of the show got fired amidst a bunch of sexual harassment allegations. And the show continued to be good without him, but I do wonder if some of that fallout effected the plans for the movie, which ended up just coming out on Netflix. It's a good movie, though, the kids were very happy with it.

f) School Of Rock

I'd never seen this movie outside of a scene here or there, since I was in college when it came out and it was kind of a family movie, and I'd already seen High Fidelity and heard Tenacious D and it just kind of felt like a redundant extension of the established Jack Black persona. But it seems to go viral for some reason or another every few weeks and people really love it, so I decided to finally put it on, and it's pretty charming, I relate to Black in these things a lot as a kind of unabashed classic rock superfan. The plot is kind of ridiculous in parts, but I suppose that's kind of par for the course. Also it's kind of funny how many people in this movie have a color for a surname (Jack BLACK, Mike WHITE, Sarah SILVERman, there's even a small role by someone named Jordan-Claire GREEN).

g) Scenes From A Marriage

As I said recently, watching HBO's new "Scenes From A Marriage" miniseries made me feel like a philistine because I'd never seen any Ingmar Bergman work, so I went back and kind of watched both in parallel (the Bergman one was originally also a miniseries but has since been edited together into a feature film). And I will admit that I prefer the more modern Hollywood production values and acting of the remake, but the original is great too and it's interesting to see in what ways they changed plot points.

9:05 AM

Monday, September 27, 2021

I recently interviewed Nile Rodgers for the 2nd time this year, for Consequence. Back in June I spoke with him for GQ, and I think I'd always jump at a chance to talk to him, just to hear some of his stories and some of his wisdom about making music.

5:04 PM

Thursday, September 23, 2021

I wrote about 30 overlooked 1991 albums for Spin, sort of a sequel to a piece I did last year about 1990.

8:59 PM

My Top 100 Singles of 1988

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

I already did the 1988 albums list, so here's the counterpart, and a Spotify playlist of all 100 songs.

1. Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock - "It Takes Two"

2. Guns N' Roses - "Sweet Child O' Mine"

3. New Edition - "If It Isn't Love"

4. INXS - "New Sensation"

5. Living Colour - "Cult Of Personality"

6. Big Daddy Kane - "Ain't No Half-Steppin'"

7. The Waterboys - "Fisherman's Blues"

8. Tracy Chapman - "Fast Car"

9. N.W.A. - "Straight Outta Compton"

10. Public Enemy - "Bring The Noise"

11. Steve Winwood - "Roll With It"

12. The Ramones - "I Wanna Be Sedated"

13. Jane's Addiction - "Mountain Song"

14. Guns N' Roses - "Welcome To The Jungle"

15. Sonic Youth - "Teenage Riot"

16. They Might Be Giants - "Ana Ng"

17. INXS - "Never Tear Us Apart"

18. Michael Jackson - "Smooth Criminal"

19. Traveling Wilburys - "Handle With Care"

20. Biz Markie - "Vapors"

21. The Dead Milkmen - "Punk Rock Girl"

22. Lita Ford - "Kiss Me Deadly"

23. E.U. - "Da Butt"

24. Rick Astley - "Never Gonna Give You Up"

25. Def Leppard - "Hysteria"

26. Eric B. & Rakim - "Microphone Fiend"

27. Run-DMC - "Run's House"

28. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Wishing Well"

29. George Michael - "Father Figure"

30. Bobby Brown - "Don't Be Cruel"

31. Cheap Trick - "Don't Be Cruel"

32. Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine - "1-2-3"

33. R.E.M. - "Orange Crush"

34. Information Society - "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)"

35. Midnight Oil - "Beds Are Burning"

36. INXS - "Devil Inside"

37. Jane's Addiction - "Jane Says"

38. Def Leppard - "Pour Some Sugar On Me"

39. The Sugarcubes - "Birthday"

40. Aerosmith - "Rag Doll"

41. Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Peek-a-Boo"

42. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - "Parents Just Don't Understand"

43. U2 - "Desire"

44. Sir Mix-A-Lot - "Posse On Broadway"

45. Public Enemy - "Don't Believe The Hype"

46. Eric B. & Rakim - "Follow The Leader"

47. Tracy Chapman - "Baby Can I Hold You"

48. The Deele - "Two Occasions"

49. Van Halen - "Finish What Ya Started"

50. The Escape Club - "Wild, Wild West"

51. Robert Palmer - "Simply Irresistible"

52. George Michael - "Monkey"

53. Poison - "Nothin' But A Good Time"

54. Michael Jackson - "Man In The Mirror"

55. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Fat"

56. Kix - "Cold Blood"

57. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - "Brand New Funk"

58. Rod Stewart - "Forever Young"

59. Stetsasonic - "Sally"

60. J.J. Fad - "Supersonic"

61. L'Trimm - "Cars That Go Boom"

62. EPMD - "You Gots To Chill"

63. Little Feat - "Let It Roll"

64. LL Cool J - "Going Back To Cali"

65. Prince - "I Wish U Heaven"

66. Sting - "Englishman In New York"

67. Aerosmith - "Angel"

68. Bobby McFerrin - "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

69. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - "A Nightmare On My Street"

70. Bruce Springsteen - "One Step Up"

71. Pebbles - "Girlfriend"

72. The Bangles - "In Your Room"

73. Run-DMC - "I'm Not Going Out Like That"

74. Elton John - "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That"

75. Def Leppard - "Armageddon It"

76. The Cure - "Hot Hot Hot!!!"

77. Anita Baker - "Giving You The Best That I Got"

78. Johnny Hates Jazz - "Shattered Dreams"

79. Slick Rick - "Teenage Love"

80. New Edition - "Can You Stand The Rain"

81. Jane Wiedlin - "Rush Hour"

82. Taylor Dayne - "Tell It To My Heart"

83. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - "I Hate Myself For Loving You"

84. Little Feat - "Hate To Lose Your Lovin'"

85. Neil Young - "This Note's For You"

86. Daryl Hall & John Oates - "Downtown Life"

87. Al B. Sure! - "Nite And Day"

88. R.E.M. - "Finest Worksong"

89. David Lee Roth - "Just Like Paradise"

90. Billy Ocean - "Get Out Of My Dreams, Get Into My Car"

91. Prince - "Alphabet St."

92. Def Leppard - "Love Bites"

93. Sade - "Love Is Stronger Than Pride"

94. Rick Astley - "Together Forever"

95. The Beach Boys - "Kokomo"

96. Kim Wilde - "You Came"

97. Pet Shop Boys - "Always On My Mind"

98. Kylie Minogue - "The Loco-Motion"

99. Phil Collins - "A Groovy Kind Of Love"

100. Cheap Trick - "The Flame"

With lists of albums, I go strictly by year of release, whereas with singles I go with the more ambiguous "year of impact" (chart peaks, etc.). One editorial judgment call I made was with "I Wanna Be Sedated," which The Ramones released as a Road To Ruin album track and "She's The One" B-side in 1978, then an A-side in the Netherlands in 1979, then an A-side in America for the Times Square soundtrack in 1980, and then finally shot the video for the song in 1988 when it appeared on the Ramones Mania soundtrack. I didn't know anything about the Ramones as a kid in the '80s to say whether the song was really prominent before Ramones Mania, but that seems to be the real starting point of it becoming one of the band's most famous songs, so I went with '88.

7:00 AM

TV Diary

Friday, September 17, 2021

a) "Only Murders In The Building"

It was a delightful surprise that Steve Martin created his first TV series at the age of 76, and that's kind of an affectionate sendup of the true crime podcast phenomenon with Martin Short. Instead of going for a full-scale Three Amigos reunion with Chevy Chase, they understandably went with a different third wheel, and while I'm not a fan of Selena Gomez as a singer, she's got decent enough comic timing that she doesn't drag the show down. It's also kind of sweet to watch a show about two old men forging a platonic friendship with a young woman, but it's mostly a really funny show with a decent little murder mystery driving the story.

b) "Y: The Last Man"

In "Y: The Last Man," every human man, and every male of every other species, suddenly dies all at once, and women and girls are left to keep everything going and figure out how to reproduce. The only cisgender man left in the world, Yorick, is a dopey lovelorn New York guy with a pet capuchin monkey, so basically Ross Geller from "Friends." But there's a lot of world-building and interesting questions raised in the first 3 episodes, I'm curious to see where this is going. In recent years there have been things like "The Leftovers" or Avengers: Infinity War where a massive number of people suddenly cease to exist, but "Y: The Last Man" feels a bit more visceral and difficult to watch because half of the population is bloody corpses rotting in the streets.

c) "The Big Leap"

The FOX dramedy "The Big Leap" is about a fictitious FOX reality show called "The Big Leap" where amateur dancers in Detroit compete to star in a production of Swan Lake. It's kind of a weird mix of folksy and inspiring and also a barbed satire of reality TV where a conniving and calculating producer is trying to orchestrate and manipulate the onscreen drama, like a slightly less gritty "UnReal." The cast is charming and makes it work, particularly Simone Recasner and Teri Polo, but the tones clash sometimes and it's a little weird to see a FOX show kind of gleefully send up the "American Idol"-style reality competition genre.

d) "American Rust"

Philipp Meyer's novel American Rust was published over a decade ago. But Showtime's miniseries airing in 2021 makes it feel a little like an accidental follow-up to "Mare of Easttown," since they're both about small town Pennsylvania cops who have a bunch of complicated personal entanglements in the murder they're investigating. The first episode sets things up well and I'm happy to watch a show where the leads are Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, and Bill Camp, but it is a little dour, don't know if it's going to be as addictive and watchable as "Mare."

e) "Scenes From A Marriage"

I'd never seen the original Scenes From A Marriage, or for that matter anything by Ingmar Bergman, because I'm kind of a philistine. But I liked the first episode of this, you can't ask for a better pair of leads than Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac and the fourth wall-breaking opening scene was kind of a fun flourish -- you see Chastain walk onto the set, get prepped for a scene, and get into character, and then you still totally get immersed in the narrative because she's just that good of an actor. I've started watching the 1973 original too, just to get some frame of reference and see what was changed and what wasn't.

f) "Doogie Kamealoha, M.D."

Remaking old IP about white guys and gender bending and/or race bending the character is cool and generally only pisses off the right people, but I have to admit I did roll my eyes a little when I heard about Disney+'s "Doogie Howser, M.D." reboot about a teenage Hawaiian girl, Lahela. But this is an incredibly charming and perfectly cast show, developed by "Fresh Off The Boat" and "How I Met Your Mother" writer/producer Kourtney Kang, with the shrewd decision to place the show in a world where the "Doogie Howser" series exists and Lahela gets the 'Doogie' nickname because, naturally, she's a teen doctor. I watched the original show when I was a kid and still have a soft spot for it, and they got the tone just right with this version, they even did a good new version of the ol' Mike Post theme.

g) "On The Verge"

I'm not really familiar with Julie Delpy's work as a write and director, but I like this Netflix series she created, feels like a very relatable, down-to-earth sort of thing about four middle-aged friends who are all going through their own situations and crises and leaning on each other.

h) "Dive Club"

I assumed this Netflix show about teenagers solving a mystery would be campy but it's not entirely. It is a little frothy and uninteresting for me, though.

i) "What We Do In The Shadows"

Kristen Schaal is now one of the vampires on "Shadows," which is just about one of the only ways that one of the funniest shows on TV could get better at this point. I like the way they've evolved the Guillermo character over time, in the early episodes I thought he was kind of a boring straight man character but the whole vampire slayer bloodline story makes him a lot more interesting and complicates his relationship to everyone else.

j) "Back To Life"

I had mixed feelings about the first season of "Back To Life" in 2019 and kind of felt like a self-contained 6-episode story, so I wasn't really expecting it to come back for a second season. But now that they've kind of hashed out all the tragedy of Daisy Haggard's character's backstory, it feels like the show can focus a little more on being a dry comedy of manners, so I like it a little more now.

k) "A.P. Bio"

Now that Paula Pell is also on "Girls5eva" but is also still on "A.P. Bio," she's basically the queen of Peacock, which has a better sitcom lineup than NBC proper at this point. The last season of "A.P. Bio" started to toy more with "Community"-style one-off conceptual episodes, and they've leaned into that more and it works, I don't think it would work for "A.P. Bio" to keep doing things the way season 1 was over and over. I am bummed that they kind of wrote Elizabeth Alderfer out of the show, though, she was the best possible foil for Glenn Howerton's character.

l) "Billions"

Every season of "Billions" is a carefully calibrated 12-episode arc, moving all its characters around the chessboard to start at one place and wind up in new, unexpected spots. So it was one of the most frustrating examples of a show's production schedule getting interrupted in 2020: they shot 7 episodes of season 5 before the pandemic hit, and this year they shot the remaining 5 episodes, so it's just on for a month again until who knows how long. But I'm glad to finally return to these stories and these characters, this season has been really great, although I'm amused that Paul Giamatti decided to shave his beard during the pandemic so now his character looks really weird clean-shaven for the first time and they had to just quickly acknowledge it and move on. And I continue to enjoy how music pops in "Billions," particularly the little shout out to Van Halen's "Atomic Punk" in the latest episode.

m) "Watch The Sound With Mark Ronson"

I've never been a big fan of Mark Ronson's work, but he's a good choice to host a show like this Apple TV docuseries where each episode focuses on a different aspect of music history and recording technology (sampling, reverb, drum machines, etc.). He's got some great interviews with the usual music doc suspects like Paul McCartney and ?uestlove, but I think my favorite moment is Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy explaining that he'd have engineers turn up the faders on all the empty channels on the mixing board because "I want the noise...the noise to me is what glues all those samples together so that it all sounds like one." Ronson's narration sometimes gets a little pretentious ("I've learned that reverb that is really about our relationship with the world") but for the most part it's really good, even the episode about AutoTune didn't feel too redundant after watching the AutoTune episode of Netflix's "This Is Pop."

n) "Frogger"

Frogger was one of my favorite arcade games when I was a kid (still is, but I more often encounter the modern knockoff Crossy Road now). So I was curious to see how Peacock would adapt it into a live action reality show, since it wouldn't really make sense to have people actually dodge literal traffic. But what they did do, an obstacle course where the main objective is not to fall in water, and occasionally get on a conveyor belt with small non-moving vehicles that cannot run you over, feels a little like a cop out. But it's fun and knowingly silly and one of the hosts is Damon Wayans Jr.

o) "Top Chef Family Style"

"Top Chef" is one of the few reality competitions I ever really enjoyed and watched multiple seasons of, and this is a great idea for a spinoff. I love seeing families cook together, it makes me think about how fun it is to let my kids help out in the kitchen.

p) "The D'Amelio Show"

When Hulu announced that they were making a reality show about the D'Amelio family, two of whom are among the most popular accounts on TikTok, a lot of people made a show of being offended that they would get a TV show, as if it's not a no-brainer for media companies to try to get a piece of the popularity of people who have over 100 million followers. And a lot of the first episode of "The D'Amelio Show" is about Charli D'Amelio and Dixie D'Amelio embarking on show business careers while dealing with constant backlash from a public that can't believe that popular TikTok creators can get TV and music deals. I suppose it's a little recursive and self-pitying but I genuinely feel bad for them and think all the outrage about kids who dance and do silly things on TikTok having careers is dumb, let them do what they do, it's not the end of the world.

q) "Motel Makeover"

A Netflix reality show about two women who buy cheap old motels and renovate them into cutesy Instagram-friendly inns, they talk like Lorelai Gilmore and the whole show is very cursed and difficult to watch.

r) "Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror"

There have been so many 9/11 documentary things in the last few weeks, I watched one episode of this Netflix one and I think that was enough for me, I was 19 when it happened so I remember it all pretty well and have not really gotten much out of revisiting it, although this series seems as well made as any.

s) "Lego Masters"

My 6-year-old son started watching the first season of "Lego Masters" with me last year and was very fascinated by the idea that there are adults who play with Legos and build big complex things with them. And he recently asked to watch it again so we started catching up on the new season. I like that one of the teams is two sushi chefs who see similarities between building Legos and preparing sushi.

t) "Teenage Euthanasia"

A new Adult Swim show where Maria Bamford plays a reanimated zombie of a teen mom, obviously very weird and very Adult Swim. Not super into yet but I wanna give it a chance to grow on me because I love Bamford.

u) "Q-Force"

This Netflix animated series is about a group of queer spies, it's a little clever but also feels very dated in some ways and makes me cringe more than laugh.

v) "Dug Days"

Up is one of my favorite Pixar movies so I was pretty happy to hear that there would be a spinoff series on Disney+ about Dug the dog (Pixar animator Bob Peterson, who writes and directs the show), who now lives with Carl (Ed Asner). It's an adorable, hilarious little show and it debuted a few days after Asner died, glad he was able to do this little handful of episodes before he passed.

w) "Octonauts: Above & Beyond"

Both my kids have loved "Octonauts," an adorable long-running cartoon about a cat and polar bear who have a submarine and go around meeting deep sea creatures. And now there is an equally adorable spinoff where they also have adventures above ground with land mammals and birds and so on.

x) "Jellystone!"

I was in the last generation of kids who grew up with the old original Hanna-Barbera cartoons still on TV all the time. But now that that stuff has been sort of culturally dormant for a while, "Jellystone!" is the attempt to reboot all the classic characters like Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound and Grape Ape in one show that's on Cartoon Network and HBO Max. It's fine, but it doesn't really have the feel of the old cartoons that I have some nostalgic affection for.

y) "Amphibia"

This show has been on Disney Channel for a couple years now but my kids have been watching it more and more lately and it's growing on me, kind of hits the same niche as "The Owl House" really well.

z) "Clarence"

My 11-year-old son never really watched this Cartoon Network show when it was on in the mid-2010s, but now that it's over, he's gotten really into it, and I kind of get it, it's a great chaotic vision of what middle schoolers are like.

11:38 AM

Monthly Report: September 2021 Singles

Thursday, September 16, 2021

1. T-Pain & Kehlani - "I Like Dat"

T-Pain is easy to root for, because he made such a huge impact on music, the style of AutoTune he popularized is still everywhere, people that doubted his talent have maybe had their mind changed by his Tiny Desk Concert or the passage of time, and he never really lost his touch after he faded from the charts (plus, he often tells sob stories about being spoken to rudely by bigger stars like Kanye West and Usher). So it's kind of frustrating that he mostly gets back on the radio by playing on nostalgia with samples of his early hits -- last year he remixed "I'm Sprung" with T*ry L*nes, this year, and "I Like Dat" samples "Buy U A Drank" while adding some new melodic twists and a flip on the premise so that it's now about a woman who can buy her own dranks, and Kehlani sounds elated to fulfill that role. Now I hope that T-Pain can keep scoring hits that don't sample his old hits while he has this momentum. Here's my favorite 2021 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month.

2. Megan Thee Stallion - "Thot Shit"

When "Thot Shit" came out I thought it was probably just a pretty good buzz single that would disappear pretty quickly when she released something else. But now that "Thot Shit" is on the radio all the time it feels pretty undeniable, she's really talking her shit and the third verse is some of the best rapping of her career, there's not a lot of MCs doing three verses on a single these days to begin with.

3. The Pretty Reckless f/ Matt Cameron and Kim Thayil - "Only Love Can Save Me Now"

When a big Chris Cornell tribute concert was held a couple years ago, someone had the excellent idea to get several women to sing with Soundgarden and Temple of the Dog (Brandi Carlile, Fiona Apple, Miley Cyrus, Nikka Costa). Taylor Momsen sang "Rusty Cage" and a few other songs that night, and now her band The Pretty Reckless has an awesome single featuring half of Soundgarden and one of those heavy 7/8 riffs that could've been on Badmotorfinger. Momsen launched The Pretty Reckless while she was a cast member on "Gossip Girl," and the band is still making hits now that the show has been off the air long enough to have a reboot, which is kind of cool to see.

4. Meek Mill f/ Lil Baby and Lil Durk - "Sharing Locations"

It's funny to think that between this song and DJ Khaled's "Every Chance I Get," neither of the 2 biggest Baby/Durk songs of 2021 are on Voice Of The Heroes. It feels like Meek Mill has squandered a lot of the goodwill he had 3 years ago when Championships came out but songs like this at least augur well for Expensive Pain, despite its terrible title and cover art. The way Durk talks about paying for lawyers for his friends in the same breath that he calls his friends murderers is weird, though, like, the way rappers' lyrics are getting used in court these days that just seems incredibly unwise.

5. Young Thug - "Tick Tock"

Young Thug announced the release date of the forthcoming Punk with a Tiny Desk Concert backed by a rock band, debuting "Tick Tock" and other new songs with guitar-heavy arrangements. But the studio version of "Tick Tock" is more of a standard Thug banger, and I underestimated it at first, but it sounds better every time it comes on the radio, this song and making my deep cuts playlist have really gotten me excited about this album.

6. Kali Uchis - "Telapatia"

Colombian-American R&B singer Kali Uchis's 2018 debut album was a modest success, and when she released a Spanish language album last year, it seemed more like a passion project that an attempt to cross over to a different audience -- it didn't even chart on the Billboard 200 when it came out. But "Telapatia" blew up on TikTok and became the biggest song of her career and a pop radio fixture, even though only a little of the lyrics are in English. It has a great groove, I hope she does more stuff with this sound.

7. PinkPantheress - "Passion"

PinkPantheress is a British teenager whose self-recorded songs blew up on TikTok and is starting to become a regular presence on the UK charts. The song that caught my ear, "Passion," is the only one of her 6 released solo tracks that runs even a little past the 2-minute mark, and it has a great '90s jungle breakbeat that adds some nice flavor to her otherwise pretty typical sad zoomer bedroom pop sound. Her other songs don't grab me as much but I'm interested to see where she goes from here.

8. Billie Eilish - "Happier Than Ever"

Happier Than Ever's title track is a standout on the album partly because it's cool to hear Billie Eilish over a roaring guitar-driven rock song for pretty much the first time. But I don't know if her label expected a 5-minute song with two distinct sections to be the most popular song on the album, and it feels like they kind of scrambled to release a single edit that features just the louder second half of the song. I think it works better in its entirety, though.

9. 42 Dugg f/ Future - "Maybach"

I initially kind of dismissed this song, partly because there's already a great Future deep cut called "Maybach," and partly because the track has mostly gotten attention for Future's corny lyric about his ex Lori Harvey. But the beat is great, the song has really grown on me.

10. Green Day - "Polyanna"

When the big Green Day/Fall Out Boy/Weezer tour was pushed back a year by the pandemic, Weezer pushed back the album they were about to release, and then wound up releasing two albums in 2021. Green Day, however, already released Father Of All Motherfuckers right before COVID hit, and it already felt like a distant memory by the time the tour finally started this year. So they released a couple singles this year to I guess have something more current to play, and this one in particular is one of my favorite latter day Green Day songs, almost has a Warning vibe.

The Worst Single of the Month: Twenty One Pilots - "Saturday"

"Saturday" partly annoys me because it unintentionally sounds like a weaker version of a favorite They Might Be Giants song and partly because Twenty One Pilots released a crossover single with no rapping that I don't enjoy at all. Their VMAs performance of this song had a very Fitz And The Tantrums vibe.

9:45 AM

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

With R.E.M.'s New Adventures In Hi-Fi and Weezer's Pinkerton turning 25 this month, I wrote a piece for Spin about how 1996 was the beginning of alternative rock's flop era.

7:10 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 246: Destiny's Child

Monday, September 13, 2021

There's been a fair amount of Destiny's Child nostalgia in the air lately, whether from Beyonce's recent 40th birthday, or from the rumors of some kind of new group activity that swirled when the header changed on the Destiny's Child social media accounts. And I've been revisiting that era a bit myself lately working on my top 100 R&B singles of the 1990s, which had a couple of Destiny's Child tracks. And even if DC is sometimes now sort of looked at as a precursor to B's solo career, they were one of the biggest girl groups of all time and had a hell of a run in their own right.

Destiny's Child deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Hey Ladies
2. Fancy

3. T-Shirt

4. Confessions featuring Missy Elliott

5. Second Nature

6. Dot

7. Feel The Same Way I Do

8. Bad Habit

9. No More Rainy Days

10. Apple Pie A La Mode

11. Illusion featuring Wyclef Jean and Pras

12. Temptation

13. Dance With Me

14. If

15. So Good (Maurice's Soul Remix Edit)

16. Winter Paradise

17. Killing Time

18. Where'd You Go

19. Through With Love

Tracks 5, 11 and 17 from Destiny's Child (1998)
Track 9 from The PJs: Music From & Inspired by the Hit Television Series (1999)
Tracks 1, 4, 12 and 18 from The Writing's On The Wall (1999)
Track 6 from the Charlie's Angels soundtrack (2000)

Tracks 2, 10 and 13 from Survivor (2001)
Track 16 from 8 Days of Christmas (2001)
Track 15 from This is the Remix (2002)
Tracks 3, 8, 14 and 19 from Destiny Fulfilled (2004)
Track 7 from #1's (2005)

One of the things that I think of as separating Destiny's Child from most other big R&B groups of their era is that they didn't have a lot of hit ballads. "Emotion" is pretty much the only downtempo song out of all their big hits (and the only one of those that was a cover), a trend that has more or less continued in Beyonce's solo career. But they were good at ballads and had plenty of them on their albums. Their 2013 compilation Love Songs, which featured the only new DC song of the past decade, "Nuclear," was sort of an official deep cuts collection that featured mostly album tracks including "Second Nature," "Killing Time," "If" (where Beyonce so elegantly sings "raggedy heifers") and "T-Shirt" (which wasn't a single but got a ton of Baltimore and D.C. radio play in 2005).

The group had great harmonies from the beginning, and I'll forever be in love with Kelly Rowland's voice, I love when she takes the lead. And I've noticed that Michelle Williams gets more and more respect now for her work in the group, especially her bridges on Destiny Fulfilled. They put in a lot of work on soundtracks when they were on the way up, so I wanted to include some of that material, especially "Dot," I really like that song more than the bit hit from Charlie's Angels, "Independent Women."

7:00 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 245: Fat Joe

Friday, September 10, 2021

I did a Ja Rule playlist the other day and wrote about how I think that him going against Fat Joe in Verzuz on September 14th is a good pairing -- they make sort of a tortoise and hare contrast, Ja the brief flash in the pan and Joe the journeyman. They also both peaked around the same time, and each had a big hit featuring the other. But I will say that Fat Joe has a much larger, much better, and much more interesting catalog, and I will be rooting for him.

Fat Joe deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Bad Bad Man

2. Watch Out featuring Big Punisher, Armageddon and Keith Nut

3. Respect Mine featuring Raekwon

4. Triplets featuring Big Punisher and Prospect

5. Walk On By featuring Charli Baltimore and Kid Capri

6. Rude Boy Salute with Big Punisher and Buju Banton

7. Da Enemy with Big L

8. Opposites Attract (What They Like) featuring Remy Ma

9. My Lifestyle

10. Bust At You featuring Scarface, Birdman and Tony Sunshine

11. Shit Is Real Pt. III

12. Terror Era with Remy Ma

13. Beat Novacane

14. Does Anybody Know

15. Pendemic

16. That White

17. Put Ya In Da Game featuring T-Pain and OZ

18. Kilo featuring Clipse and Cam'ron

19. Cypher featuring Nick Shades

20. How Long with Remy Ma

21. Heaven & Hell with Dre

Track 1 from Represent (1993)
Tracks 2 and 3 from Jealous Ones Envy (1995)
Tracks 4 and 5 from Don Cartagena (1998)
Track 6 from Terror Squad: The Album with Terror Squad (1999)

Track 7 from D.I.T.C. with D.I.T.C. (2000)

Tracks 8 and 9 from Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) (2001)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Loyalty (2002)
Track 12 from True Story with Terror Squad (2004)

Tracks 13 and 14 from All Or Nothing (2005)
Track 15 from Me, Myself & I (2006)
Track 16 from The Elephant In The Room (2008)
Track 17 from the Jealous Ones Still Envy 2 (J.O.S.E. 2) (2009)

Track 18 from The Darkside Vol. 1 (2010)
Track 19 from Darkside III (2013)
Track 20 from Plata O Plomo with Remy Ma (2017)

Track 21 from Family Ties with Dre (2019)

Fat Joe's longevity is pretty remarkable when you think about it. His first album came out in 1993, which means he's been going longer than Nas and Jay-Z. He talked about 2019's Family Ties possibly being his final album, but he's continued to release music and just had a radio hit, "Sunshine (The Light)," 28 years after "Flow Joe" (for comparison, there's only 26 years between LL Cool J's first and most recent radio hits). Arguably the only person who's had a longer run on the charts in rap history is Busta Rhymes, but only if you include group work and features.

One thing you can say about Fat Joe is that he's always kept great company and had an eye for talent. He was in Diggin' In The Crates with Big L, and gave Big Punisher his on-record debut on "Watch Out" before mentoring future hitmakers like DJ Khaled, Remy Ma, and Cool & Dre. His early albums had a lot of greats from his D.I.T.C. groupmates Diamond D, Buckwild, Showbiz, and Lord Finesse. I especially love Diamond D's beat for "Bad Bad Man," a great use of the Yvonne Fair breakbeat that was popularized by Biz Markie's "Check It Out" and used most famously on Jay-Z's "Where I'm From." And even Joe's 2013 reunion with Diamond D on "Cypher" is pretty good.

Don Cartagena was released 4 months after Capital Punishment and features Big Punisher on 7 of 14 songs, so that and the first Terror Squad album are essential pieces of Pun's brief, brilliant career. But my favorite Fat Joe album might be Loyalty, which was kind of in Joe's most pop era but didn't have any really big singles, it's just a surprisingly solid album.

On later albums, Fat Joe continued to work with great producers including DJ Premier ("That White"), The Alchemist ("Bust At You"), Dame Grease ("Triplets"), Streetrunner ("Pendemic" and "How Long"), Cool & Dre ("Heaven & Hell") and The Runners ("Does Anybody Know"). DJ Khaled is famous for not really producing most of the beats on DJ Khaled albums, but back when he did make beats more regularly, he did quite a few tracks for Fat Joe and Terror Squad, including "Beat Novacane" (which was Khaled's producer handle at the time),

10:37 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 244: Ja Rule

Wednesday, September 08, 2021

Ja Rule is facing Fat Joe in a Verzuz battle on September 14th. It's kind of an interesting pairing because it's a good match despite the fact that Fat Joe's had such a long career with peaks and valleys while Ja had a relatively brief run but was absolutely huge for a couple years. Ja would never be able to face rivals like 50 Cent or DMX in a Verzuz, but other maybe Fabolous, Fat Joe is the best possible opponent you could find for him.

Ja Rule deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Story To Tell
2. Kill 'Em All featuring Jay-Z

3. It's Murda featuring Jay-Z and DMX

4. Daddy's Little Baby featuring Ronald Isley

5. Fuck U featuring 01 and Vita

6. I'll Fuck U Girl (skit)

7. Love Me, Hate Me

8. Extasy featuring Cadillac Tah, Black Child and Jayo Felony

9. X featuring Missy Elliott and Tweet

10. Big Remo (skit)

11. Never Again

12. The Inc. featuring Cadillac Tah, Black Child and Ashanti

13. Pop N****s

14. Last Temptation featuring Charli Baltimore

15. Against Time

16. The Life featuring Hussein Fatal, Cadillac Tah and James Gotti

17. Where I'm From featuring Lloyd

18. Life Goes On featuring Trick Daddy and Chink Santana

19. To The Top featuring Kalenna Harper

Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Venni Vetti Vecci (1999)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from Rule 3:36 (2000)
Tracks 9, 10, 11 and 12 from Pain Is Love (2001)
Tracks 13 and 14 from the The Last Temptation (2002)

Tracks 15 and 16 from Blood In My Eye (2003)
Tracks 17 and 18 from R.U.L.E. (2004)
Track 19 from Pain Is Love 2 (2012)

It's interesting to think of how Ja Rule was in the mix with Jay-Z and DMX for years -- they all appeared together on Mic Geronimo's "Time To Build" in 1995, before any of them had an album out. And once they were all platinum Def Jam stars by the end of the decade, there was talk of a supergroup of all 3 of them called Murder Inc., but it never amounted to anything beyond a couple more posse cuts, one on the Streets Is Watching soundtrack and one on Ja's solo debut. A couple decades later, DMX is gone but a legend, Jay-Z oversees an empire, and Ja Rule is just one of those faded aging hitmakers remembered for a few singles, not remotely the same kind of legacy.

Say what you will about Ja Rule's success with thug love songs and R&B collaborations, but I think he made the most of his talents. Venni Vetti Vecci is one of his better albums, but he was probably never gonna be remembered as one of the greats in that gangsta rap vein he was working in, especially since DMX got out a year ahead of him and dominated that lane. So when Ja Rule started making more melodic songs, he really found his own way to stand out, and I still think "Put It On Me" is the best rap/R&B crossover song of the 2000s.

Since Ja Rule was Murder Inc.'s big franchise act, he was just a constant presence, 6 albums in 6 years. But even though 2004's R.U.L.E. was a modestly successful comeback after the 50 Cent beef decimated his career, Ja Rule never really recovered, and the only album hes released since then, 2012's Pain Is Love 2, came out while he was in prison for tax evasion. When Def Jam balked at releasing a new album in 2005, they released a best-of compilation instead to fulfill his contract, and I reviewed Exodus when it came out. At the time I was frustrated that it was one of those greatest hits comps that skipped some big hits to make room for album tracks, but looking back now I respect that he put "Daddy's Little Baby," "Never Again," and "Love Me, Hate Me" on Exodus, those are definitely songs that make a case for Ja having more range than he's given credit for.

One thing about Murder Inc. only having one star rapper and one star singer is that Ja Rule's albums became the primary showcase for the roster, and so a lot of these songs are just loaded up with unmemorable verses by guys who never became stars in their own right like Cadillac Tah and Black Child. Vita was good, though, she should have been a star. The albums also kept most of the production in-house with Irv Gotti, 7 Aurelius, and other Murder Inc. producers, which gives Ja a signature sound but also seals him off from a lot of what was going on in the rest of the rap world. When he finally got on a Neptunes beat on "Pop N****s," the effect is kind of jarring. I included "I'll Fuck U Girl (skit)" and "Big Remo (skit)" because I want to make note of how bizarre it is that Ja Rule had a guy doing a Bernie Mac impression in skits on multiple hit albums years before Kanye West famously did the same thing. Why didn't anyone just get the real Bernie Mac to do a skit on their album?

10:55 AM

Movie Diary

Tuesday, September 07, 2021

a) Reminiscence

Reminiscence is the debut feature by Lisa Joy, showrunner of "Westworld" with her husband Jonathan Nolan and was also a writer on "Pushing Daisies." And it's pretty good, although it's a little somber in that Nolan style that rubs some people the wrong way. I always like the combination of a noir tone with a futuristic sci-fi backdrop, though. It's weird to realize that in 25 years of constant dystopian movies, this is one of the first since Waterworld that's actually about the sea levels rising in the future.

b) Annette

French director Leos Carax's first English language feature Annette is a very strange film, a musical with songs by Sparks, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. There's murder and a singing puppet baby and Driver playing a very odd sort of a standup comic who performs in a green bathrobe. It felt to me like a slightly more successful and fully realized version of Charlie Kaufman's most indulgent movies like Synecdoche, New York, I didn't love it but I liked it.

c) Vacation Friends

Vacation Friends doesn't sound like a real movie title, it sounds like one of those movies the characters in Seinfeld go see. It's a pretty good old-fashioned studio comedy, though, John Cena and Lil Rel have a good John Candy-and-Steve Martin chemistry going as an unpredictable goofball and his uptight foil, and it's cool to see Meredith Hagner from "Search Party" with a big feature role. That said, the first 1/3rd of the movie that actually took place on the vacation was the best part, it kinda went downhill from there. One of the weird revelations of Vacation Friends, however, is that when you put normal middle-aged guy hair on John Cena, he looks, to paraphrase another Cena movie, like Dominic West ate Dominic West.

d) Cruella

Doing a Cruella de Vil origin story movie seemed like a bad idea to begin with and everything I'd heard about it was pretty discouraging. But perhaps I just managed to set my expectations so low that there was nowhere to go but up, because I found it moderately charming. To make your star an American faking an English accent, and have her offscreen narrating for the entire first 15 minutes, is a particularly risky choice, but Emma Stone managed to carry this movie even though it didn't deserve her.

e) The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf

Netflix did an animated spinoff movie of "The Witcher" in the style of their other violent 'adult anime' shows like "Castlevania," and it was very good, wouldn't mind a whole series or more movies in this vein.

f) Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Coming of age in the '90s, I loved those Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books, especially Stephen Gammell's incredibly creepy charcoal illustrations. So I was pretty excited to hear that a film adaptation produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro was on the way, although it took me a couple years to finally watch it. And I was pretty happy with it, the decision to not do an anthology film and sort of string together several of the original stories within a linked narrative worked out well. But I don't think I'll have any nightmares about it, maybe just because I've aged out of the target demographic.

g) Suburban Gothic

This low budget horror comedy from 2014 was not particularly good, but Kat Dennings and Ray Wise are in it, and there's a funny John Waters cameo, so I thought it was a decent little waste of time.

8:18 AM

Monthly Report: August 2021 Albums

Friday, September 03, 2021

1. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power

I love that Halsey had a whole 2-month rollout announcing that she'd made an album with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross but didn't release any advance singles, so I could just anticipate and wonder what it would sound like and then hear it all at once. I've never been a big fan of Halsey's singing -- cue the "binonnies and avicoddies" Vine -- but she won me over a bit with her last album Manic, and this one is just awesome, I love that a big pop star in their prime decided to go all in on Nine Inch Nails soundscapes with Reznor himself. "Easier Than Lying" and "You Asked For This" are definite standouts but the whole thing holds together really well as an emotionally intense concept album about pregnancy and childbirth where Halsey really lets Reznor rifle through his whole bag of tricks. Here's my 2021 albums Spotify playlist that has all these records in it.

2. Tinashe - 333

I'm glad that Tinashe was able to transition from a major label artist who never quite sold as much as people expected to an independent artist pretty seamlessly and keep releasing a project every couple years with great production values on her music and her videos. 333 might be her best record since Aquarious, love that run from "Bounce" to "Unconditional" to "Angels."

3. Martha Wainwright - Love Will Be Reborn

I'd never heard any of Martha Wainwright's previous solo albums, but I always liked her backing vocals on her brother Rufus's stuff. And this album is really good, there's this relaxed, autumnal ambiance to the whole thing, I particularly like "Getting Older" and "Being Right."

4. Nas - King's Disease II

I thought King's Disease was good but maybe a little overpraised because it was such a rebound from Nasir. But I think the sequel is a lot better, the best Nas album in a while. Some stuff like the brunch Sunday Funday song is some corny old man rap but he does it unapologetically enough that he pulls it off.

5. Boldy James & The Alchemist - Bo Jackson

I know I'm very cynical and blase about all these lyrical minimalist coke rap crate digger albums from the Griselda/Alchemist/Marciano axis that a lot of people swear is the most exciting thing happening in hip hop today. But hey, this is stuff is good, I enjoy it, there are so many Boldy James projects and I haven't heard a lot of them so I have no idea where this ranks but Bo Jackson's very good, one of the few recent vintage Alchemist projects that gives me a little of the feeling of his classics with Prodigy like Return of the Mac and Albert Einstein. Earl Sweatshirt sticks out like a sore thumb on a project like this, though, I'm not even sure he's a good rapper at this point.

6. Turnstile - Glow On

It's been cool to see Turnstile really blow up this year, probably the biggest buzz around a Baltimore band since Future Islands in 2014. I know their eclectic anything-goes approach to hardcore rubs some people the wrong way (apparently 311 is the go-to comparison that detractors use) but I like the kitchen sink approach on this album, you never really know what kind of odd percussion or synth sound is going to pop up next. I really like the guitar leads on "Don't Play" and "Dance-Off," those trebly, oddly textured solos sound like Reeves Gabrels via Tom Morello or something.

7. The Killers - Pressure Machine

A lot of artists who planned on spending the last year on the road have used their unexpected free time to turn out new studio albums at a faster clip than they usually do. And while I thought The Killers' 2020 album Imploding The Mirage was a solid if unremarkable 6th album from a band that peaked early commercially, Pressure Machine genuinely surprised and impressed me. Sam's Town is still the best fusion of the band's synth rock default and their heartland rock ambitions, but Pressure Machine goes further on the latter with lots of dusky midtempo songs and slice of life spoken word vignettes from natives of Brandon Flowers's Utah hometown. And Ronnie Vannucci continues to be a really interesting and creative drummer, particularly on "West Hills" and "In The Car Outside." Weirdly, the band finally collaborated with Bruce Springsteen himself this year, but they released "Dustland" as a non-album single a couple months before this album.

8. The Joy Formidable - Into The Blue

The Joy Formidable has a core sound that's a big old fashioned shoegazer wall of fuzz, but Ritzy Bryan's songwriting has always had some interesting unexpected contours to it, even the range of sounds she gets out of her guitar and her pedals, there are weird textures on "Interval" and "Sevier" that I've never quite heard before.

9. Ellen Foley - Fighting Words

Ellen Foley has had a really fascinatingly varied career -- she sang on Meat Loaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light," was backed by The Clash on one of her solo albums (Mick Jones supposedly wrote "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" about her), and had an acting career that included starring in Broadway musicals and one season of "Night Court," and small roles in several blockbusters (Tootsie, Cocktail, Fatal Attraction). And it's cool to hear her still singing rock'n'roll with a theatrical flair at the age of 70, with some original songs and some covers, including "Heaven Can Wait," one of the few Bat Out Of Hell songs she didn't originally sing on. The song "I'm Just Happy To Be Here" is a great sort of central statement of the album.

10. Colin Hay - I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

This is a covers record that leads off with the title track, the Bacharach and David song made famous by Dusty Springfield. But of course I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself is also an apt title for an album made while under COVID-19 lockdown. I kind of assumed it was going to be a lo-fi solo acoustic sort of thing, but the recordings on here are pretty lush, full band arrangements with strings. Colin Hay's run as a hitmaker with Men At Work was pretty brief, but he seems to have carved out a nice niche for himself over the last 40 years and his voice has aged well, it's a delight to hear him sing stuff that influenced him like "Waterloo Sunset" and "Ooh La La."

The Worst Album of the Month: Kanye West - Donda

Kanye West has put a lot of effort and/or thought into some of his album covers, and he's also done a few zero effort 'statement' covers (the blank jewel case of Yeezus, the picture of the vinyl for Jesus Is King, and the photo snapped the night before album release for Ye). But Donda's cover is just a Spinal Tap-style default black square, on a record that haphazardly hit streaming services on Sunday morning two days after missing its third announced release date, with one track temporarily held back for clearance issues. And that feels like the record in a nutshell, Kanye would rather say nothing (give no interviews, go around masked and silent in public for weeks, let Jay-Z utter the album's only lyric that attempts to walk back the MAGA Kanye saga) than commit to anything more concrete than cute platitudes like "I'll be honest, we all liars." And it's weird to say that the problem with a 108-minute album is that it doesn't do enough, but literally 20 minutes of it are devoted to one incredibly dull beat. There are a few enjoyable songs on here for the late career wilderness years highlight reel ("Pure Souls," "Off The Grid," "Believe What I Say"), but they're swimming in a soup of overproduced guest star showcases.

11:53 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 243: Young Thug

Thursday, September 02, 2021

Young Thug is releasing his new album Punk in October, so I wanted to look at the pretty large catalog of one of the best and most influential rappers of the past ten years.

Young Thug deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Hercules

2. Numbers

3. With Them

4. Light It Up

5. Gain Clout

6. Guwop (featuring Quavo, Offset and Young Scooter)

7. Don't Call Me (with Carnage and Shakka)

8. That Go! (with Meek Mill and T-Shyne)

9. Now (featuring 21 Savage)

10. Tattoos

11. Climax (featuring 6lack)

12. Daddy's Birthday

13. I Know

14. Surf (featuring Gunna)

15. Dome (featuring Duke)

16. City Girls (with Chris Brown)

17. Three (with Future)

18. Dead For Real (with PeeWee Longway)

19. Ridin' (featuring Lil Durk)

20. Swizz Beatz

21. Do U Love Me

22. Slam The Door (with Gunna)

23. Die Today

Track 13 from I Came From Nothing 2 (2011)
Track 18 from 1017 Thug (2013)
Tracks 2 and 15 from Barter 6 (2015)
Tracks 1 and 19 from I'm Up (2016)
Tracks 3 and 10 from Slime Season 3 (2016)
Tracks 6 and 20 from Jeffrey (2016)
Tracks 12 and 21 from Beautiful Thugger Girls (2017)
Track 7 from the Young Martha EP with Carnage (2017)
Track 17 from Super Slimey with Future (2017)
Track 9 from the Hear No Evil EP (2018)
Tracks 5 from Slime Language with YSL Records (2018)
Track 11 from the On The Rvn EP (2018)
Tracks 4 and 14 from So Much Fun (2019)
Track 23 from So Much Fun (Deluxe) (2019)

Track 16 from Slime & B with Chris Brown (2020)

Track 8 from Slime Language 2 with YSL Records (2021)

Track 22 from Slime Language 2 (Deluxe) with YSL Records (2021)

Unfortunately, some of my favorite Young Thug mixtapes, Rich Gang's Tha Tour Part 1 and the first two Slime Season tapes, are not on streaming services. But there's still a whole lot of albums and mixtape and EPs and collaborative projects to choose from, more than enough really. A lot of the frustrating things about Young Thug's career that I wrote about in this 2018 Vulture piece have been sorted out now by the success of So Much Fun and it's cool to see him really in the position in the industry that he'd deserved to be in for a long time. A lot of his projects didn't have a proper charting single per se, but he's always made a lot of videos, so I at least avoided songs that didn't have official videos, which still left a fair number of fan favorites and songs with big streaming numbers.

About 5 years ago I made a playlist of my favorite Young Thug songs produced by London On Da Track, I still really love that combo and there's a few London beats on here ("Numbers," "Tattoos," "Daddy's Birthday," "Climax," "Do U Love Me"). There's also a lot of tracks from the other major producer who launched his career with Thug, Wheezy ("Dome," "Ridin'," "Die Today," "Slam The Door," "Swizz Beatz," "Guwop"). And there's tracks from other MVPs of modern trap like Southside ("Three"), TM88 ("Dead For Real"), Metro Boomin ("Hercules"), Mike Will Made It ("With Them"), and Pi'erre Bourne ("Surf").